


and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart

by dawnstruck



Series: Rock Ballad Trilogy [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU - 1980s, Angst, Car Sex, Fluff, Gentle Sex, Goodbye Sex, M/M, Mentions of War, Mentions of homophobia, Sad, mentions of the AIDS epidemic, soldier!Shiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 20:19:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10815993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawnstruck/pseuds/dawnstruck
Summary: “I saw you at the arcade, with all those loud and envious boys around you as you bested everyone's scores, and my screen just kept blinking K.O. back at me. Knocked out, game over, and I was all out of pennies.”





	and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to break my heart last night. First, I was listening to some nice rock ballads and was struck by the mental image of Shiro and Keith gently fucking in a classic car. Then I came across Johnny Logan's Hold Me Now and thought, hey, why not make it hurt?
> 
> I hope you enjoy the pain as much as I did. If I have to suffer, so do you. :)

“ _Hold me now, don't cry_

_Don't say a word, just hold me now_

_And I will know though we're apart_

_We'll always be together_

_Forever in love_

_What do you say when words are not enough?”_

Johnny Logan ~ Hold Me Now

 

Shiro brings him bellflowers, more purple than blue and and somewhat reminiscent of stars.

“They reminded me of your eyes,” he says, pressing the bouquet into Keith's hands.

“Don't be so cheesy,” Keith mutters, but cradles the flowers against his chest anyway.

He should probably go and find a vase to display them or, better yet, some heavy books to press and preserve them. But somehow it makes more sense to keep them right here, at his fingertips.

“Shall we?” Shiro asks with a small gesture. Behind him, his black Chevy gleams under the suddenly awakening street lights.

“Yeah,” Keith says and lets the door fall shut.

Shiro waits for him on the curb, opens the door on the passenger side with a wink and a little bow, but Keith resists the urge to stick his tongue out at him and only glares a little.

They don't do this generally, this open kind of courting. They don't get to hold hands when they go for walks, only let their elbows brush against each other now and then. Even now, a part of Keith wants to glance around to check whether the curtains in one of the neighboring houses are moving, whether anyone is watching them. But he just ducks into the car and digs his jittery knees into the underside of the dashboard.

Shiro rounds the car which dips a little when he gets into the driver's seat. He doesn't kick up the engine right away, fumbles with the radio instead, until a guitar strums through the silence between them.

For a moment, Keith just listens.

“Is that new?” he asks, watching as Shiro's turns the key in the ignition.

“Yeah,” Shiro says, one hand disengaging the parking brake while the other spins the steering wheel around, before pulling away from the sidewalk. “Had a fella at the barracks record it for me. But I picked most of the songs.”

Keith frowns slightly, slowly understanding the implications of that.

“Do they...?” he begins, unsure on how to end the question without sounding too presumptuous, too entitled.

“Know that I'm seeing someone?” Shiro finishes for him, easily bobbing his head in reply, “Yeah, they do. Kinda hard to keep it a secret if I always drive to town with them but never actually join them at the bar.”

Keith licks his lips to stall himself but, in the end, his curiosity wins out.

“What did you tell them then?” he wants to know and Shiro pretends to think about it.

“Hm, let's see,” he muses, giving Keith a very obvious once-over where he is leaning with his elbow against the window. “Spitfire with a sharp tongue. Dark hair. _Great_ legs. Kisses like it's going out of fashion.”

The blush is hot and tingly on Keith's cheeks and he ducks his head. From underneath his fringe, he can see that Shiro is still looking at him, a fond smile playing around his lips.

“They are all very jealous,” Shiro adds, “And I am very lucky.”

“Eyes on the road, asshole,” Keith says and grins into the hollow of his hand.

 

The drive-in cinema is located at the outskirts of town. They are early and it is still relatively empty but Shiro doesn't pull up close to the large screen, just parks them somewhere off to the side. Keith doesn't comment. They both know that this is not about the movie.

The horizon in the West is still the color of withering plum blossoms but, all around them, night has already fallen like dark silk.

Keith thinks of the couples in the other cars. The ones who are on their first date, full of promises and potential, and the ones for whom it's just one of many, indistinguishable from the rest. For some, it might be the last, the day a fight is not resolved, when tempers run too hot and callous words are spoken.

Theirs is a last date, too, Keith knows, but in a very different manner.

The mixtape is still playing and they've got the windows rolled down, [cicadas](https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/ultrasonicNoiseGenerator.php) clamoring outside in their summer desperation, but in Keith's ears it fades into nothing but static when Shiro opens his mouth.

“I saw you at the arcade first,” he says, hands on the wheel as though it were an anchor instead, “I saw you at the arcade, with all those loud and envious boys around you as you bested everyone's scores, and my screen just kept blinking K.O. back at me. Knock out, game over, and I was all out of pennies.”

Keith hadn't known this, hadn't even suspected, and the air sits heavy in his chest as he listens.

“When I saw you at the library later that week, I knew I had to talk to you. You were standing on your tiptoes and reaching all the way up to the top shelf and I just thought, damn, if only he were a little shorter I could offer to help him. But you got your book and, when you turned around, you caught me staring.”

“You looked so dumb.”

“You mean enamored.”

“Same difference.”

Keith had been researching for a presentation in his Biology class, something about ecosystems and homeostasis and the danger of upsetting the fragile balance by introducing a foreign species. Shiro had offered to help him and they had talked all afternoon, till the library closed, and then they had gone to the diner instead and talked some more. Keith had barely gotten a C on the presentation but it had been worth it.

“I felt so bad when I realized you were still in high school,” Shiro adds now, thumping his head against the backrest of the seat, “Like a cradle robber.”

“You are literally two years older than me.”

“Still,” Shiro groans and, for a moment, he keeps his eyes closed.

“Do you regret it?” Keith asks. It's difficult to swallow around the lump in his throat, difficult to breathe around the heart in his chest.

“I regret not talking to you right there at the arcade,” Shiro says. When he turns to look at Keith, his gaze is clear. “Because I would have had one more week of knowing your voice and your name and how mine sounds in your mouth.”

 

The movie begins just as the mixtape runs out. Shiro reaches out, flips the cassette around in its slot, and presses Play for the B-side.

Keith taps his fingers against the still August-warm paintjob of the Camaro and then pulls his arm inside to roll up the window. Next to him, Shiro is doing the same.

Gone are the movie, the cicadas, the world. Here, no wars are fought.

The kiss is as easy, as natural as everything else between them, just like their first kiss by the lake. For the first time in a long time, Keith feels that old shyness, that uncertainty of tongue and lips and eyelids. He sighs through his nose, opens his mouth, and surrenders.

The handbrake digs into his thigh and he shifts a little, tries to get closer anyway. In the distance between their bodies hangs the knowledge that this will be over before the sun rises.

Soon, Shiro's hands are on Keith's chest, running up and underneath the red jacket that will always faintly smell of the mothballs at the thrift store where they had found it together. The lining of the faux leather is warm with Keith's body heat and Shiro rubs his thumb along the exposed collarbone. With one last push, he brushes the jacket off Keith's narrow shoulders.

Keith, daring in return, hooks his fingers into the waistline of Shiro's pants, thumbs at the button above the fly. Shiro pulls back from the kiss.

“Keith,” he begins, sounding regretful and responsible, and Keith cannot bear it.

“I don't-” he tries, fails, tries again, “I want-”

But he doesn't know what he wants. Shiro's hands all over him. Imprints on his skin. A change, a memory. Too many things at once, too many to name. Most, though, he will never get.

But maybe Shiro understands. Maybe he feels the same. He purses his lips and gives a little nod, before reaching out to open the glove compartment, a pack of condoms and a bottle of lubricant neatly stashed up front. Keith cannot help but cock an eyebrow.

Shiro gives a defeated chuckle.

“Of course I want it, too,” he admits to the wordless accusation, “Of course I want you.”

So they climb into the back of the car, too many limbs and too little space. The bouquet of bellflowers is still propped up on the seat behind Keith's, their fragrance dusting the air underneath the stronger scent of worn leather.

Undressing is awkward. Keith's jeans are too tight and his boots have too many laces, but Shiro worries at them with patient fingers until they come undone, until he can smooth the heel of his hand across Keith's ankle, ghost his lips against the inside of his knee.

Keith suppresses a small gasp when Shiro's mouth moves up further along his thigh. They've never gone anywhere near this far, not with all their clothes off, not when all their moments were stolen from what little time Shiro got to spend away from the barracks.

“Do you know how to do this?” Shiro asks, pressing a wrapped condom into Keith's hand.

Numbly, Keith shakes his head. He's heard enough about it, but none of it had contained detailed instructions.

“I thought... you were gonna...,” he says, unsure quite how to phrase it. Shiro smiles, dips a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“I will,” he promises, “But I want to blow you first.”

With a gentle voice, he leads Keith through all the steps, one hand on his hipbone, and when that is done he bends down his head and wraps his lips around the head of Keith's cock.

The breath stutters out of Keith like a natural disaster and he scrambles for Shiro's bare shoulders, for something to hold on to.

Shiro doesn't flinch at the strong taste of latex, even though Keith's nose had crinkled in disgust. He just bobs up and down in slow measured motions, presses his tongue against the underside, spit dripping down his chin.

“Shiro,” Keith warns, breathless, and only then does Shiro pull back, wiping a palm across his mouth.

“Can we...?” Keith's asks. He's never been good with words and English Lit has only poorly equipped him with the right vocabulary for this. Feebly, his mind grasps for some sort of poetry – _How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, And parted the shirts from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart_ – but nothing quite seems to match the measure of this moment.

All he knows is that he doesn't want to wait any longer, that they have no time to wait at all.

It's uncomfortable at first, even when it's just fingers, and he cants his elbows into the upholstery in lieu of tensing the rest of his body. But he weathers it, keeps his eyes on the prize, on Shiro's glowing face in front of him.

“Be careful,” Shiro tells him intently as he unwraps another condom, “You always have to be careful when you do this with someone else.”

“I'm not gonna-” Keith protests. He doesn't want to think of the future and other people and why they would be there when Shiro isn't.

“Keith,” Shiro says, “Please.”

There is tension sitting at the corners of his mouth and Keith understands that, for once, this is not just about them. They've both read the side columns in the newspaper. They've seen people shake their heads over it and politicians dismiss it on TV.

Keith lowers his gaze.

“All right,” he relents quietly, “All right.”

His fingers shake as he helps roll the condom onto Shiro, but he tells himself its anticipation.

When he finally settles back along the seat, the bellflowers press up again his back, an uneven lump, but he does not bother to shove them away. There's another soft[ rock ballad](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi0xyltOwc0) freely flowing from the radio, lapping against the edges of his awareness like the surf against the shore.

Perhaps it was always meant to happen this way. The two of them, this town, this car, a Faraday cage protecting them from the vengeful lightening that strikes from the skies. Only the morrow. The morrow was supposed to be different, painted in pastel colors whenever Keith had tentatively allowed his mind to wander.

When Shiro breaches him, it's another of those odd thought-stopping moments of everything being just a little too much, body and brain unable to comprehend the conflicting sensations.

Mild pain, certainly, wedged somewhere underneath the overwhelming heat. A blunt edge of pleasure, manageable but with room for more. Love, unfailing, unfortunate, too young to be cut short so soon.

They fuck like this on the back-seat, fuck because Keith knows no other words for this, fuck gently because they know no other way. Shiro holds him, puts pointed kisses to Keith's pale neck, not question marks, not exclamations, but full-stops. Yet so many of them that Keith cannot help but read them as ellipses.

His hands roam the plains of Shiro's back moving above him, curve around the rolling shoulder blades, up along each singular vertebra. The black hair at the sides and back of Shiro's head has been freshly shorn, the crisp ends prickling against Keith's fingers that have known little more than a paper cut. Overcome, Keith hugs him close, presses Shiro's ear against the place where his own heart is wildly beating.

Just this, just once, he thinks, and hopes it translates into his every touch.

In answer, Shiro sweeps Keith's sweat-damp hair out of his forehead, kisses his eyelids, kisses away the tears that have spilled themselves down Keith's cheeks, unbidden yet irrevocable.

“Takashi,” Keith breathes, just barely. His back arches off the sticky leather.

“I've got you,” Shiro soothes, holding him close, “I've got you.”

 

Afterwards, when they are dressed and somewhat shy again, they rearrange themselves on the narrow backseat, Shiro's right arm draped over his shoulder, Keith burrowing into his side.

It's dark now, the movie long since over, the other cars gone. Only the moon somewhere, and fireflies, just enough to make out the tilt of Shiro's nose.

Keith's pinky is tangled in the thin chain around Shiro's neck, the dog tags clicking against his knuckles. The outline of Shiro's name, his ID number, his penicillin allergy are right at the fringes of his touch. And he wants to hate it, the war, the military, the officers and officials who make such decisions, but the truth is that they would never have met if Shiro had not been stationed here.

A small hurt spiteful part of him wonders whether maybe that would have been for the best.

But wasn't that humanity's age-old question? Whether any of this was worth it? Whether a handful of hours filled with joy and pleasure and _good_ could make up for the cesspit of pain surrounding it?

“Be careful,” Shiro reiterates now, “In a small town like this, it's hard to lose the rumors.”

Keith knows that well enough. He's always been the odd one out, though. It wouldn't be the first unsavory story that had been spread about him, but so far there had never been any consequences. People talked a lot, but they rarely dared to act.

“When you come back,” he says instead, “We can move somewhere else.”

Perhaps he is still a child in this, valiantly holding on to the last of his hope. But Shiro was from the city. Shiro had grown up with neon lights and skyscrapers and bright bars in dark corners where people like them could easily blend into the scenery. And one day, maybe, they would have more than just shadows and echoes.

“Yeah,” Shiro says, indulgent as always, “I'd like that.”

One day, maybe. But until then...

Keith clenches his fist before pulling his wallet from his jacket pocket, slipping his old student ID from it and blindly shoving it at Shiro.

“Take- take this with you,” he says, very carefully not looking up, “I don't need it anymore and I don't have any other picture.”

The black and white photograph is small and grainy, outdated by the length of Keith's senior year, but it's something.

“Remember when I said I felt like a cradle robber?” Shiro asks, taking the flimsy plastic and inspecting the familiar name, the date of birth, “ _This_ doesn't help.”

“Shut up,” Keith huffs, “I graduated.”

For a moment, Shiro is silent. Then he slips the ID into his left breast pocket.

“Thanks,” he says and the knuckles of his other hand brush across Keith's cheekbone.

 

Keith loves the old Chevy. He loves how it takes up a lot of space and how Shiro still maneuvers it so effortlessly. He loves the feeling of the engine purring underneath him. He loves the time they had gotten milkshakes at the drive-through with Keith's classmate standing behind the little window and staring at them, open-mouthed.

Tonight, though, spent together in this car, he loves most of all, with its crushed flowers in the backseat, used condoms on the floor. They could crash right now and it would be perfection made flammable.

They are already pulling up to the sidewalk in front of the house again, though, and Keith never wants to leave. But the Earth cannot be kept from turning, the sun cannot be kept from rising, and Shiro gets out of the car without much ado, so Keith does the same. Time is sand between in his fingers and his heart is an earthquake.

The street is still quiet and unassuming, just as this whole town is always quiet and unassuming. The morning newspaper has not been delivered yet. The chess of war and politics sits at a stalemate.

Keith puts a reluctant foot onto the steps that lead to the front-porch. The aging wood protests under his weight, made heavier by the dread deep in his guts.

“So.” Shiro's voice is just above a whisper. He wipes his palms off on his pants. “This is it, I guess.”

Goodbye, the end, their last meeting. Keith's tongue is dead in his mouth.

Shiro just tries for an enouraging smile.

“I've got something for you, too,” he says and then takes Keith's hand to drop the car keys right into it.

Keith stares.

“What,” he says. His fingers spasm around the metal.

“I don't need it anymore,” Shiro echoes Keith's words from before, “And I want you to have it.”

Keith swallows.

“How will you get back to the barracks?” he asks.

“I'll just walk.”

“It's too far.”

The smile does not waver.

“I got my memories to keep me company,” Shiro says, “And a buddy of mine is manning the gate tonight, so he's going to let me in no problem.”

Keith tries to swallow, but it's difficult, tries to speak but it's impossible. His hand curls around the keys, tightening until the ragged edges dig into his skin.

“Just... for safe-keeping,” he manages to get out eventually, his tone brokering no argument, “Not for forever.”

“'course not,” Shiro agrees, “So keep her clean, will ya?”

 

The car sits by the curb and they kiss by the front door, almost unremarkable with how chaste it is, how soft. Shiro's leans in and his lips linger for a moment but, when he pulls back, his eyes stay even longer. His thumb is rubbing circles against Keith's wrist, his panicked pulse.

“See ya,” he says as he has done every time since that first day, and Keith gives a jerky little nod.

“See ya,” he says, his own voice somewhere between fragile and rough.

Shiro steps down the stairs, backwards, never looking away as though trying to brandish the sight of Keith into his retinas. The gravel in the driveway crunches underneath his boots. Then he winks and turns away.

Private Takashi Shirogane walks off into the early morning hours.

Keith stays behind.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, how was that? Good? Good. I already have a sequel in the works as well which will be, you guessed it, painful in a different way.
> 
> Btw, I intentionally didn't explicitly state just which war Shiro is shipping off, too. Originally, it was all supposed to be much more ambiguous, just sort vaguely sometime in the second half of the 20th century, but this is not about accuracy anyway.
> 
> This was a bit of an experiment as I don't usually write this kind of story (genre, historical AU, bittersweet ending etc.), so please let me know what you think!


End file.
